A breakdown of the California primary ballot, books for kids about elections and politics, a look at the signature issue in this presidential race: trade.
Quick and dirty: Here's what will be on your primary ballot next week
Just one week and a day remain until the California Primary, and California Secretary of State Alex Padilla says registration is up in the Golden State.
Nearly 1.8 million voters registered or updated their information ahead of the May 23rd deadline. Many of them will come to the polls next week.
That's why Take Two thought now might be a good time to review what Californians are voting on next week, in addition to the presidential primary.
Scott Shafer is the senior editor for KQED's California Politics and Government Desk. He walked A Martinez through the ballot.
Press the blue play button above to hear the interview.
(Correction: During the interview, A Martinez stated that 20,000 Californians are still registered members of the American Independent Party. The LA Times reports that 20,000 Californians who were accidentally registered under the American Independependent Party changed their registration after a recent LAT story revealed that many AIP members registered by mistake. We regret the error.)
What more lower paying jobs could mean for LA
Los Angeles County is projected to add hundreds of thousands of jobs across a broad range of industries over the next four years.
That's the good news.
The bad news? Many of those jobs will be relatively low paying.
The mixed job forecast comes from a new report out today from the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC).
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- Christine Cooper, LAEDC senior vice president and lead author of the report
Forgotten genocide: Uncovering the systematic extermination of California's natives
Imagine for a moment if the population of a group of people dropped 80 percent in less than three decades.
A mass die-off, or a mass extermination?
The latter is what UCLA assistant professor of history, Benjamin Madley says happened to California's native populations. The kicker? The mass extermination was state-sponsored with taxpayer dollars.
Madley wrote about this in his new book, "An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe," and shared his findings with Take Two's A Martinez.
What tribes were here and how did they co-exist with others who called California home?
There were many different tribes here in California. In the northwestern corner of the state, there were the Tolowa; they were people who hunted and fished. They had 60-foot long redwood dugout canoes. Down in the southeast portion of the state, there were Quechans, who farmed along the banks of the Colorado River. And they traded with each other; there were extensive trade networks that roughly follow the lines of today's interstate highways.
California became a state in 1850. Did statehood change things?
Statehood did change things. California's legislature first convened in 1850, and one of its initial orders of business was banning all Indians from voting, barring all Indians with one-half of Indian blood or more from giving evidence for or against whites in criminal cases, and then denying Indians the right to serve as jurors. California legislators banned Indians from serving as attorneys, so in combination, these very laws shut Indians out of participation in and protection of the state legal system. So this amounted to a virtual state-sponsored grant of impunity to those who attacked them.
It almost was if California's legislature decided to declare war on the native population ...
I think it's not an exaggeration to say that California legislators established a state-sponsored killing machine. California governors called out or authorized no fewer than twenty-four — that's two dozen — state militia expeditions between 1850 and 1861, which killed at least 1,340 California Indians. And state legislators put the power of the purse behind this project. They passed three bills in the 1850s, which raised up to 1.51 million dollars to fund these operations. These militia expeditions helped to inspire vigilantes to kill at least 6,460 more California Indians during this same period.
You mention how the State of California and the US Government have not called this genocide. Why not?
Frankly, there's a lot at stake. When Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush recognized the forcible relocation and internment of some 120,000 Japanese-Americans — many of them Californians —during World-War Two, this then led to compensation. Congress has now paid out over $1.6 billion dollars to these Japanese-Americans and their heirs [...] And there's also the legacies that are all around us. Should we stop commemorating the supporters and perpetrators of this genocide: people like Peter Burnett, Kit Carson, John C. Freemont. And there's also the question of education: will the genocide against California Indians join the Armenia Genocide and the Holocaust in public school curricula or public discourse? So there's a lot a stake in acknowledging genocide.
Press the blue play button above to hear this interview.
(Post has been updated.)
New CA poll shows Clinton leading in Democratic race
The latest statewide polling numbers ahead of the June 7th California primary may have Hillary Clinton supporters breathing a sigh of relief.
Last week, a Public Policy Institute of California poll showed Clinton just eking out a 2-point lead over Bernie Sanders.
But a new Hoover Institution Golden State poll, out today, tells a different story. The poll shows Clinton with a commanding 13-point lead over Sanders.
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- Bill Whalen, Hoover Institution research fellow
On the campaigns: What a tougher trade policy could do to California
Thousands of SoCal workers could lose out in a trade slowdown
Experts say none of the presidential candidates' trade plans would bring scores of manufacturing jobs back to Southern California.
But they agree: thousands of Californians would be out of work if trade slows down.
Many of those are the ones unloading cargo ships arriving from overseas and sending goods towards the shelves at your nearby Wal-Mart and Target.
Weston LaBar, executive director of the Harbor Trucking Association, joins Take Two to share how truckers in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach could be out of work.
8 books that make the presidential election kid-friendly
Sorting through presidential politics is confusing enough for adults, so imagine what kids are making of it this election year.
Now might be a good time to step away from all the partisan bickering, the name-calling, the attack ads, and head with your kids to the quiet comfort of your local public library.
That's where you'll find plenty of great books about elections.
Mara Alpert, children's librarian for L.A.'s Central Public Library offers her top picks:
"Vote for Me!" by Ben Clanton
Donkey and Elephant are after your vote and they'll try anything-- begging, pleading, bribery, name-calling, even some literal mud-slinging. In the end, unlike the actual presidential candidates, they apologize to one another and agree to stay friends. Who walks away with the win? You'll have to read the book to find out.
"Duck for President" by Doreen Cronin; illustrated by Betsy Lewin
Keeping a farm running is really hard work and Duck is really sick of doing his chores, which are messy. So he decides that he's going to run for farmer and change things. He wins by a landslide (even after they find a missing vote stuck to the bottom of Pig), but being in charge of the farm, it turns out, is even harder than he thought, so Duck decides to run for governor next. When it turns out that being Governor is more difficult than he realized, Duck sets his sights on the White House.
"President Squid" by Aaron Reynolds; illustrated by Sara Varon
When Squid discovers that no Giant Squid has ever been president, he comes up with five important reasons why he will be the greatest president who ever lived. Among those reasons are the fact that presidents are famous (and so is Squid), they get to do all the talking (another thing Squid is very good at), and the president is the big boss (and there's nobody bigger or bossier than Squid).
"Grace for President" by Kelly DiPucchio; illustrated by LeUyen Pham
When she's studying U.S. Presidents, Grace finds out that none of them have been women, and she wants to change that. She runs for class president and is up against the popular boy in her class, which she's a little worried about. The other students are randomly assigned states, giving everyone a lesson on the electoral college (even parents, with a helpful author's note at the end).
"Max for President" by Jarrett Krosoczka
It's time to elect a new class president and both Max and Kelly are running for the position. They make posters and pins and promises, but they don't say mean things to each other, they don't even frown at each other! When Kelly ends up winning, she picks Max as her Vice President and they both work together to improve things for their class. This book makes a great introduction to elections for pre-schoolers.
"Bad Kitty for President" by Nick Bruel
This fun chapter book features Kitty and her run to head up the Neighborhood Cat Coalition. It's a really funny look at the election process and all of its madness that older kids will enjoy and actually learn from too.
"Vote!" by Eileen Christelow
This picture book/comic book hybrid explains the election process through a race for mayor. One of the candidates daughters (and her two dogs) explain all the ins and outs, including voting, voter registration, debates, polling and volunteering.
"Presidential Misadventures: Poems That Poke Fun at the Man in Charge" by Bob Raczka; illustrated by Dan E. Burr
This book is a hilarious collection of "clarihew" poems. They're four-line poems that poke fun at a famous person. Forty-two U.S. Presidents all get the clarihew treatment, putting a hilarious spin on U.S. history.
New music from Allen Toussaint, Xenia Rubinos and Fantastic Negrito
This week we have breakthrough albums from two young artists — one east coast, one west coast — reshaping urban sounds with some sharp social criticism, plus the final album from one of the towering figures of modern American music.
Artist: Allen Toussaint
Album: "American Tunes"
Songs: "Big Chief," "American Tune"
The title, taken from the Paul Simon song that closes this album, tells the story: This is American music, a river running from the pre-Joplin cakewalks of Louis Moreau Gottschalk to Fats Waller to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn to Bill Evans to Professor Longhair — all given remarkable new life through the musical mind and masterful fingers of New Orleans giant Allen Toussaint. As such, it makes for a perfect, if sadly premature epitaph for Toussaint, who died in November at 77 of a heart attack following a concert in Madrid, just weeks after completing these recordings.
Now, pianist and interpreter might be the last of his talents that get mentioned, understandably given his towering stature as a songwriter, producer and arranger. We could spend hours, days just listing the key artists and songs he’s been behind in one or more of those capacities, going back to the 1950s: Ernie K-Doe’s "Mother in Law," Lee Dorsey’s "Working in a Coal Mine" and "Ride Your Pony," LaBelle’s "Lady Marmalade," the Pointer Sisters’ "Yes We Can Can," Herb Alpert's "Whipped Cream," Irma Thomas’ "It’s Raining," the horn charts for the Band’s "Last Waltz" concert, arrangements on Paul McCartney’s "Venus and Mars" album, many works by New Orleans mainstays Dr. John and the Meters, and so on and so on. He was a key force not just in shaping his city’s sound, but swathes of American popular music through several eras.
So it may seem odd to some that what turned out to be his last recordings features just one of his own songs, an instrumental of "Southern Nights," best known in the 1977 No. 1 hit version by Glen Campbell. But it at once shows his relationship to these great legacies of modern music, and properly, profoundly places him in that company.
This is a fine companion to 2009’s "The Bright Mississippi," both albums largely instrumental sets produced by Joe Henry, who also oversaw the Toussaint-Elvis Costello collaboration "The River In Reverse," recorded in New Orleans just weeks after the 2005 flood. As on "Bright Mississippi," Henry brought in drummer Jay Bellerose and bassist David Piltch for restrained, chamber-jazz complement, and this time also enlisted Rhiannon Giddens to sing on two Ellington songs ("Come Sunday" and "Rocks in My Bed"), as well as electric guitarist Bill Frisell, acoustic slide player Greg Leisz and sax icon Charles Lloyd on a few tracks. And Van Dyke Parks not only provided the sharp arrangement for Gottschalk’s 1857 Latin-tinged keystone "Danza," he turns it into a two-piano duet with Toussaint
But it’s Toussaint’s deceptively graceful approach that elevates every piece. As pointed out in the astute liner notes by Tom Piazza, a New Orleans music critic, novelist and one of the writers on the HBO just-after-the-flood drama "Treme," on one hand Toussaint brings a New Orleans tinge, with its subtle funk and delightful flourishes, to such jazz classics as Strayhorn’s "Lotus Blossom" and Evans’ "Waltz for Debby" (somewhat perversely played in 4/4 rather than waltz-time), while transforming such New Orleans standards as Prof. Longhair’s "Mardi Gras in New Orleans" and Earl King’s "Big Chief" (best known from Longhair’s repertoire) into elegant etudes and concisely imaginative sonatas.
The sequence unfolds like a vibrant novel or film. And at the end, Simon’s "American Tune" is epilogue. Here we get not just Toussaint’s piano, but finally his voice, too, conversational and eloquent with Simon’s portrayal of the complex cultural mix of our nation that brought about the music we’ve just heard, born of struggle and perseverance, of fears of dying and dreams of flying, of transitions and uncertainties, of destinations and destinies unknown. Toussaint brought it into his repertoire in the first few years after the flood, one of several New Orleans musicians who latched onto it as a song that expressed what they, and their city were experiencing as they fought to rebound and rebuild. Here, though, as many in New Orleans and beyond still mourn his loss, hearing him sing this caps this final album with a perfect measure of both celebration of a life of music and sadness at its ending. His life was a truly American tune. An American symphony.
Artist: Xenia Rubinos
Album: "Black Terry Cat"
Songs: "Mexican Chef," "Lonely Lover"
As the debate over just what, and who, is America only intensifies, there may be no sharper, more pointed, more witty, more forceful portrait than "Mexican Chef," a new song by Brooklyn’s Xenia Rubinos. And more danceable. If the melting pot is boiling over, she seems to say, let’s take a look in the kitchen. And there, framing the song, she spotlights a vivid picture: "French bistro, Dominican chef / Italian restaurant, Boricua chef / Chinese takeout / Mexican chef." And the nouveau American, she celebrates, has Afro-Latin Caribbean Bachata music as the lively soundtrack — literally in our eateries, figuratively in the nation.
Now that all sounds fun and flavorful, but then she lists dozens of roles by which people of color form the foundations of our country — "Brown walks your baby …. Brown builds your walls …" And tragically, too commonly, "Brown gets shot." This is as hard-hitting and as entertainingly compelling as what Anglo-Sri Lankan artist M.I.A. has done from a nouveau Europe perspective, and in some ways as incisive as prime Public Enemy.
But there is more to Rubinos. Much more. When we reviewed her 2012 debut "Magic Trix," we were quite taken with her eccentric, but strong musical personality. Or personalities, as she could seem a different artist from bracing track to bracing track in a shifting urban mix of R&B, rock, hip-hop, percussive experiments and elements of her Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage. There was a brash confidence to it all, even more so with this return. A sense of assuredness comes through on "Black Terry Cat" in such soulful R&B songs as "Don’t Wanna Be" and "Lonely Lover" that could fit in a playlist alongside Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu, or perhaps some of what Esperanza Spalding is doing these days.
But that’s not at the expense of her eccentricities, her individualism, which shines in the twitchily rhythmic "Black Stars" (drummer and creative partner Marco Buccelli produced the album) and stutter-beat "Right?" both of which would slot nicely as complements to arty Tune-Yards and St. Vincent tracks. On these, it’s as if she’s taken all the sounds and senses alluded to in "Mexican Chef" and crafter songs that express and embrace that nouveau America with flair and fervor.
Artist: Fantastic Negrito
Album: "The Last Days of Oakland"
Songs: "Working Poor (Radio Edit)," "Lost In a Crowd"
From the kitchens of Brooklyn with Xenia Rubinos, we move to the streets of Oakland with Fantastic Negrito. That’s the name under which Xavier Dphrepauless has performed for some time both solo and with his band, before getting some national spotlight last year as winner of the NPR Tiny Desk Concert’s unsigned artist contest. On his first full album since, he’s taken that spotlight and focused it on troubling situations in his Bay Area community and the nation at large, all in a powerful package of poetically energized urban blues.
After a brief spoken-word and street dialogue intro, Dphrepauless launches into the hard-hitting "Working Poor" (the album version uses some coarse language). From there he tours the world he sees with an eye for justice unserved. It’s part Marvin Gaye’s "What’s Going On," part Curtis Mayfield, part Kendrick Lamar and part electrified Leadbelly. The latter’s ‘40s-vintage tale of desolation "In the Pines" appears here, transformed into a from-the-inside tale of homelessness and hopelessness. A different take on that theme comes in the punchy "Lost In a Crowd," a track that also got the spotlight recently when Fantastic Negrito was featured performing it in a scene from the ABC series "Empire," the band joined by the show’s character Jamal Lyon in a hip lounge performance.
Along the way, a couple of interludes using street dialogue help illustrate and punctuate, but the songs themselves paint the vivid picture with dark fire. Throughout, Dphrepauless/Negrito runs through various moods and emotions: he’s angry, determined, confused, motivated, discouraged, in various turns and combinations. All that comes together in the closing "Rant Rushmore," an emotional, soulful summary of what he sees, what he fears and what he hopes.
Candidates make push for California's Native American voters
California is often seen as what the future of the country could look like in the coming years. And during an election year, that means some candidates are paying attention to the diverse communities that make up the state's potential voters.
While much attention is paid to the sizeable Latino, Asian and African American populations, less so is given to the state's American Indian residents.
But that may be changing.
As recently as this weekend, Senator Bernie Sanders highlighted the issue in a speech in Visalia, calling on Californians to recognize a "debt of gratitude" to Native Americans.
And the campaign of Hillary Clinton has made a push into the community, securing some key endorsements along the way.
"The engagement says to me that this is a good thing for Indian Country," said Joely Proudfit, director of the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center at California State University, San Marcos. "I do think the candidates are looking to invest in Indian Country in a way that we haven't seen in the past."
First woman to win $1.1 million technology prize on her victory and women in science
Frances Arnold is the fourth U.S. Citizen and the first woman to win the prestigious Millennium Technology Prize from the Technology Academy Finland.
It's for her work on directed evolution, which is a method of creating specific traits in enzymes and it's something that's used in laboratories around the world.
To tell us more, Frances Arnold, a biochemical engineer at Caltech, joined the show to discuss her prestigious prize.
Interview Highlights
What is directed evolution?
"If you go outside or even look at the skin of your hand you can see the most marvelous products of evolution. All this amazing diversity of the biological world was made by this engineering process of evolution, making genetic diversification and natural selection. These things, when you think about it, they take materials, energy from their environment and turn them into more life. Wouldn't it be marvelous to be able to use some of that to solve human problems? Some of the machines, the enzymes, those catalysts that do all the chemistry if we could use that in human chemistry we would solve a lot of problems."
"...Using evolution as an algorithim...if you use that, so it's a way of doing something, it's a way of doing design. Just like humans have been designing poodles, lab rats, corn, carrier pigeons...we've been doing that for thousands of years, right? By deciding who parents the next generation. But with directed evolution, we could that now at the level of the DNA that encodes even a single protein..."
How does this affect either now or in the future the average person?
"You'd be amazed actually, at how many products you might use in your daily life that come from enzymes and even some of those come from directed evolution. Look at your laundry detergent, enzyme power? Those were all made by directed evolution, because those enzymes need to work in non-natural conditions and take stains off clothes. Mother nature never asked them to do that before, but then it goes into things like manufacturing drugs...we can make biofuels with enzymes, we can make chemicals that we need in our daily lives. It's a huge spectrum of things.
What message do you think your award and you winning sends to young girls?
"I think it's really clear that women can do this, they can do it well and even more important, we can really enjoy a career in science. I have had such a wonderful set of experiences as scientists, working with brilliant young people, solving problems that are important for the world and doing things that basically help people. I do hope that when girls read about the award and certainly read about the kind of research that we can do, that they might choose to use their talents in this direction."
To hear the full interview, click the blue play button above.
Herons and rapids: LA River open for the summer season
Get your fishing pole and kayak ready: the L.A. River is open for the season.
On Monday, two portions of the river opened to the public for recreation: the Sepulveda Basin and Elysian Valley, off the 5 freeway.
The areas will be open daily through September, sunrise to sunset.
To hear more about what's open and how the opening day was, we're joined by Steven Appleton. He runs L.A. River Kayak Safari, which leads groups down the river.